Abstract: This article examines the nexus between China's economic catch-up and the legal constraints imposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) by empirically investigating the political economy context in which China has defended itself in WTO disputes. Through inductive reasoning, it derives four explanatory factors from selected WTO cases in which China was the defendant to explain how China was able to continue development in key industries after losing WTO disputes. These four factors—the procedural "loophole" in the WTO dispute settlement system, the domestic policy space permitted under WTO rules, China's adaptive industrial development strategy and litigation delay caused by complainants—together provide a broad perspective of China's development experience as shaped by its interactions with international economic rules. This article offers a fresh perspective of China's WTO disputes and enriches the study of China's development by incorporating the international environment, thus complementing the existing studies which focus on domestic mechanisms.
Chenxi Wang (Fri,) studied this question.